Silicon Valley Girl: AI, Tech and Career Growth - AI Safety Expert: No One Is Ready for What's Coming in 2 Years | Roman Yampolskiy

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

Roman Yampolskiy has spent 15 years at the University of Louisville studying one question: can we control AI? His answer is no. And in 2026, the early evidence is showing up inside his own department — a 28% drop in co-op placements for CS students. Prediction markets for AGI have collapsed from 2045 down to 2028–2030. So I asked him the question everyone actually wants answered: if 99% of jobs really do get automated, which ones survive? He named five — and they're not the ones you'd expect. We also cover: — What to invest in when AI can replace most human labor— Why he told his own 17-year-old to think twice about college — How to raise kids with agency in a world that automates thinking — And the answer he gave when I asked if we're living in a simulation If you've been using "AI" and "superintelligence" as the same word, this conversation will fix that. Topics: AI safety, Roman Yampolskiy, AGI 2030, jobs AI can't replace, future of work, AI superintelligence, investing in AI era, simulation theory, career advice 2026, AI riskMore from the Silicon Valley Girl: Newsletter:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=futureproof-sub&utm_content=guest-name&utm_term=Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconValleyGirl⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Can we control AI? I don't think we can. If we build them, it is nothing you can do. Artificial general intelligence means the system can do anything a human can do. So if we live in a world where that is true, let's say in two years, traditional paths to accumulate well, just having a job, may not be able to do it. having a job may not be available. But there are always other opportunities.

We'll still have more time to... You made this prediction that by 2030, 99% of jobs are going away. We're in 2026, how we're doing so far. I'm doing great. I don't know about the rest of you. The prediction is about capabilities. The technology will have to make it happen.

It doesn't mean we'll decide to actually do that. Deployment through economy is, very different from having technological capabilities to do something. Today we have self-driving cars, but we also have millions of drivers. That's true, but I feel like with the self-driving, the technology is not yet there 100% in terms of safety. Yes, it can do it within the city like San Francisco. I want to go outside, like highways, they're still not sure. So when talking about, I have a lot of people who are watching who are maybe CPAs, managers,

product managers, designers, and Oanthropic released this. Have you seen that the stats? that AI is capable to do like 20% of their jobs. But there are still a lot of areas where AI is not capable. So according to you, how much can AI do now for a typical white collar worker? So there is no typical one. Some occupations, basically if you're a white collar worker,

you're doing symbol manipulation on a computer. For some of them, it's gone. Already. So many jobs. You don't buy tickets from an agent anymore. That used to be a human job. thousands of people sold. Yeah, but that's not that's internet.

What about like a? I'm saying technology can replace certain jobs completely. The moment technology comes, right now, I think things like translation, for example. I can fully automate translation for many languages. Are there some esoteric languages? Are there needs for political translators? Maybe. But for many of those jobs, there is no future.

I wouldn't suggest majoring in Spanish. Yeah, yeah. Translator is done. Okay, who else? Junior programmers. We see huge reduct. reduction and need for people who are just graduating college or looking for a co-op who need to basically be trained to at some point in the future be software engineers, system

architects right now. All we know is CEC++. That's not enough. We have, I think, 28% drop in co-op placement for our department. Oh, wow. So you see it within your department already. What do you tell them, those people who are unable to find jobs? Unfortunately, we don't tell them what they need to hear.

We tell them, try to writing your CV, try to, you know, learning additional skills. But reality is, by the time they graduate, those are usually first-year co-op students. We've been in the program for a couple years. By the time they graduate in another two years, it's going to be much worse. Well, if you could talk to them right now, someone comes to your student and says, you know, have Lauren C++ for two years. I can't find a job. What do I do? So some of them decided they'll have more protection if they had hardware components. So if we do engineering on top of computer science, electrical engineering,

nano engineering, it would give them a little more protection? For a couple of years? A couple of years. It's all question of so we got cognitive labor automated, then physical labor comes as soon as we get robots deployed. So now are three years. You give three years until I have a robot in my household? I think, again, there is a big difference between you can buy it today and it's commonplace. So you can buy a flying car today. Yeah.

We don't see flying cars. It's the same with humanoid robots. You can buy one. It's expensive. But, well, scale production to millions of units in a couple years. Wow. That actually gives me hope because I'm so tired of making, doing dishes and laundry and everything. Okay, translator is done.

Junior programs. It's interesting how junior programmers are doing. Junior programmers are done, but senior programmers are not. But being a junior programmer is a path to becoming someone's senior. So how do they progress without having job experience? That's exactly the problem we're facing. They don't have any future. And when we talk about seniors are fine right now.

We're talking about very short term. Long term, all jobs can be automated. Question is, do we decide to automate the job or do we prefer a human being to do it? Who decides? The company? Consumer. If I want a human podcaster to interview me, I'll come to you. If I want a robot, I'll go to a robot.

Is this, when you see layoffs, like we're seeing METIS about to lay off a lot of people. We saw Jack Dorsey's message blogs, but I think he's rehiring people. But also, I was just talking to Gary Vee. I think he has 700 people in his company. He thinks it's really dumb to fire people right now just because, and I see it in my If 35 people can 2x my output, then I just hire more to like 5x my output. And if my competitor thinks the same, then it makes no sense to fire people right now. Just because a human plus 10 AI agents is way better than, you know, not having that human.

And right now that's the case, that one human manages them and improves your productivity. But if you can replace that human with a model you get for 20 bucks a month, are you going to pay that human? The thing is there is no such model right now. Right now, but again. That makes strategic decisions, has taste, understands me. We are not talking about today. Today is not interesting. You can look outside your window and see today.

We want to know what's coming. And how fast? How soon is it coming? It's hyper exponential. It's faster than we anticipated. Prediction markets had always happened around 2045. Then it collapsed. Then it's what you said, 2030, 2028.

Okay. So is that most of the jobs that you still feel like, for example, agriculture, When you see it, look at Anthropics report, agriculture is nowhere near being replaced with AI. When you say all the jobs, is it really all the jobs or just specific sectors? So I know nothing about agriculture. Okay. But if you have humanoid robots, that's physical labor.

So that's the next wave. First, you have cognitive labor. Anything you can do on a computer, any symbol manipulation. Yeah. That's where you're going to see it happen. As soon as we get to human level, I see no reason to pay a human if the results are the same. And you can get drop-in employee, essentially. A couple of years, you think.

It seems quite possible. Okay, I'll give you that. What difference does it make? So you're saying in five years, all the jobs are gone. Yay, great, go to college for 10 years to become a doctor. No, that's exactly. If I know that we have three years, then my next question would be, do you think it's our last chance to build wealth for our families?

If all the jobs are gone, we're not making money, and we end up in a world where, you know, that's it. as many you own that much stocks you own that much cash because you can't make more cash we don't know what happens to economy with free labor the moment you have free labor do you get abundance and everything is just available because it's so cheap to produce or something else happens we don't have any good studies on what happens to value of fiat currency with free labor what happens to cryptocurrencies what happens to other investments so do stocks and non-AI companies go go down, do stocks and AI companies go up? We don't have any understanding of that space.

So generally it's a good idea to have wealth and to have it early. You'll still have more time to grow it. But it may be the case that traditional paths to accumulate wealth, just having a job, may not be available. But do you think our society wouldn't be as, like it wouldn't adjust that fast to this new, like our governments, they wouldn't let this happen or, humans view. I don't know. Like I can't imagine that in three years there's no way to make money. I didn't say that. I said traditional pathways where you get a job as a junior programmer may not be available to you. There are always opportunities. AI is a great assistant to start a company. Yeah. If you have a team 35 people right now, I can have 35 agents working for me for free.

A lawyer, an accountant, Lego designer, web designer. That's an opportunity we never had before. That's also true, but then I think what prevents an LLM from seeing a gap in the market, creating a business to fill that gap, and making all the money for whoever made that model. Do you ever think about that? Models are not limited to whoever made them. We all get access to open source models, typically a few months after the top model, private model is released. That's true, but also I've heard this theory where, for example, if you're talking to a particular, chat, LLM, it collects all the data about your business.

And then the goal for the owner of that model is to just identify those opportunities and take over them. Do you believe that? Luckily, the scale is very different. If Sam Altman is trying to raise $6 trillion, your mom and pop business is not exactly his target to overtake. But if it's the whole market where a mom and pop businesses thrive, I don't know, like car sales, whatever, like he takes over the whole industry. I think the bigger concern is automation of labor, not that an evil human will use AI to steal your business process. It may happen, no doubt.

It happened before AI, but I don't think that's where the big damage will come from. How many years do you give entrepreneurs? So there is two very different questions we should be talking about. One is kind of business as usual, economics, and now we're trying to understand what works in new economy. The real problem, and that's kind of what I'm talking about in some of my research, is are we still around? Are we all dead? Is superintelligence going to take us out? I really, I can't imagine a world where we have, I don't know, one country, one company owning everything, because that's when everything disappears, right? How does humanity disappear?

I know AGI and it starts within one company. If one company reaches AGI earlier than other companies, then it takes over the whole world. How do I utilize the years that I have left then? Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check.

all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. I think it's a good idea to do things which you always postpone. So a lot of people kind of think, I'll retire in 50 years and that's when I'm going to really live my life, have fun and all that. And sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes they have cancer at 40. So try to do things you like sooner and not do things you don't care about at all. But when it comes to a career, right, for a lot of people careers, this is interesting, right? So some people, like this is my hobby, right?

I love that it pays the bills, but also I would do it anyway. I would find something else, but I would just still have these conversations. Isn't that amazing? If labor is free, then anyone can just do their hobby. For some people as gardening, for some people's having kids and just spending time with their kids from what I've experienced so far like my life has become easier just because there are so many decisions I don't want to be making like choosing your insurance or thinking about how to optimize taxes so whatever immigration now AI

solves it for me I stopped missing days when my kids have to wear pajamas at school because they would always send us these long emails now I just asked Gemini to put everything in my calendar so I wake up in the morning I know it's pajamas day today I I used to forget a little. So now my life's getting easier. And if I could do this podcast and, you know, it's cheaper for me to have my team or whatever. Like, isn't that a great world?

Right, but you're using word AI to mean completely different things. You're referring to narrow tools you're using right now to summarize your email. And you're also kind of using it as future super intelligence smarter than all of us combined. Not the same technology. AI tools, narrow AI is awesome. I use it all the time.

We should have more of it. We can use it to solve real problems like Isamaday. But if we create general superintelligence, we don't understand it. We cannot predict it. We cannot control it. It has capability of wiping out humanity. Can you talk about how do we create? Is that AGI?

Is that the same? AGI is a precursor. So AGI is basically automation of human cognitive labor. It's a scientist, it's an engineer. Then artificial scientists and engineers start doing AI research. Very quickly, progress goes hyper-exponential. We have systems not just smarter than any human in any domain, but smarter than all of us in all domains.

Think someone would take you of a million. We have no concept for that. Or Einstein was 200. Many standard deviations away from the norm. So the cognitive gap is something like humans versus squirrels. Squirrels have no concept of what we are doing. How we can harm them, traps, poisons, none of it makes sense to them. That would be very similar.

We have systems capable of doing that. novel science, discovering novel physics. And if for whatever reason they decide to take us out, I don't know what the reason could be. It could be to protect them from creation of competing superintelligence. It could be to lower temperature of a planet to improve compute. It could be something I cannot even think about. But if they decide to do that, we cannot stop it.

Can we instill the right values into AI? If you have a book of right values, you would be doing really well. We don't. Philosophers have spent millennia trying to agree on a set of ethical values. We don't. We disagree by religion, by region, by basically time in the history of humanity. What was ethical a hundred years ago is considered completely unacceptable today. What we believe is ethical today, likewise will be unacceptable in the future.

If we somehow manage to agree on static ethics, not dynamically changing but static, we have eight billion agents who don't agree on much. And then if we manage to agree and keep it static, we don't know how to code it up. Because we don't program AI models, they're self-learning from data with supply. But if we supply data, this is your personal constitution, right? You don't kill humans, you work for humans, you work for.

So this is science fiction, Azikazim of three laws of robotics. And he wrote that exactly to demonstrate that, we'll never work, it will always fail, it creates interesting science fiction. But if you have a super intelligent lawyer, you're not going to fool them. Every one of those terms is self-contradictory. It's ill-defined. What does it mean not to harm a human?

Is the system fighting you eating a donut because it's unhealthy? Is the system banning abortion? It's not obvious what you encode in that meaning. So people often say, do good. Don't do bad. Great. But now define what that means in C++. Well, I feel like if it's super intelligent, it will be able to.

It's a very common misconception. People think if something is smart, it's also good, and it has common sense. But common sense is not common. Human common sense is not common. What is obviously true in one culture is horrible crime in another. If I say to a system, I don't want any cancer in this world. Cancer is bad. One solution is to kill all humans.

It accomplishes the goal. But then it's against the Constitution. Like we don't kill. We try to prolong lives. Right. And the worst dictatorships in the world all had constitutions, which were beautiful. If a human dictator can find a way to bypass any regulation, a super-intelligent lawyer with no way for us to punish it, it's immortal, it has no body to put in prison, it's smarter than you.

You can turn it off. It's not an option. It has back-ups. So I don't think in any adversarial relationship, we would be competitive, we would lose. So the only way to not lose is not to play the game. We can benefit from creating narrow systems, very practical advice for your audience,

create tools for solving real world problems, cure breast cancer, wonderful. But if you create general superintelligence, which is right now goal of many corporations, we're all going to regret it. How do you create something that cures cancer without creating this general intelligence? Because as far as I understand, I interviewed Priscilla Chan, who has BioHub, and they're trying to map the cell.

And so far, even with AI tools, I think they're only able to map like 1% of cell. Because there's so much going on. I feel like you need the most intelligent system to go that deep. Is it even possible to create something that only works in a cell but doesn't understand the world? The hope is possible we have some precedence or protein folding problem. It was a major problem in science, very important for curing diseases. understanding human genome, and it was sold with a system which was dedicated to that problem. It was trained on relevant data. It wasn't trained in all of Internet.

It's at the same time not a chess player, not a politician, not a poker player. It has one task and one type of data. If you make it super capable, eventually there is a fuzzy boundary between a tool and an agent. So long term, it could still be dangerous, and combination of tools can be dangerous. But it's definitely much easier for us to understand and control something narrow domain versus something completely general with full set of capabilities. But a company, like again, protein folding is deep mind and deep mind, I guess, is working on super intelligence, right?

As same people, I feel like it's impossible to stop this. I don't disagree with you. So for anyone who's watching, who's concerned about this, is there anything they can do? Because from what I'm hearing, okay, someone's going to reach this super intelligence. I just trust them. I hope. Well, like, I mean, what can I do? If you're enjoying this episode and if you want to stay relevant in the era of AI or at least

understand what's going on, please follow this channel. I sit down with the most amazing guests every single week to learn about AI. And the thing is, when I sit down with people like Roman, I do care if it goes live, but also like having these conversations is really important for my mental health to understand what's going on, to be prepared because I like to stay in control, right? And at least be able to do something with this information. So if you're like me and you want to tune in, please do not forget to subscribe to this channel. So that's a common assumption people make.

They think that people working and this technology understand what they are doing. They have no idea. They publicly say it. They don't understand how the system works. They cannot predict it. They cannot fully control it. The best they can do is put some filters in place. Don't talk about this topic.

Don't say that word. So depending on who the member of your audience is, maybe there is nothing they can do. If there's someone in positions of leadership, political, or in a company, they can make those decisions, what to build, what not to build. I just wonder, because again, if we take those large companies,

they work for shareholders, they're all competing with each other. The only way to win is to reach super intelligence, right? Because there's no other way to win this game. Well, you can make a lot of money curing real problems in the real world. You don't have to create superintelligence to get most of economic benefit. It feels like once you reach super intelligence, you're able to solve, able to build businesses, you're able to cure cancer and just solve every problem in the world.

Except controlling it. Except controlling it. It seems like a big problem. No amount of money is a good investment if you're going to be dead. Have you ever, like have you seen? in a leader of those companies or similar companies who are committed to doing what you're describing? So they all on record, even before they became CEOs

in those companies, as saying AI safety is very important, this is very dangerous and likely to kill us. More recently, many of them have indicated that if others stop, they would stop. I think CEO of Anthropic made a statement exactly that, I think China versus US, likewise, China said, We are interested in doing it right. The Communist Party doesn't want to lose power.

So they would be open to slowing down if you asked it. But nobody is doing that. They're just saying that. We're still alive. We should try. We cannot give up. It feels like we need to have a nuclear level accident for people to actually start paying attention.

We considered that. Unfortunately, people don't learn from those. We had nuclear war. We had nuclear bombs dumped. And then we agreed on something. And we continue developing nuclear weapons and spreading them to new countries. But at least we haven't used them since. And that...

So far. At that scale. Give it some time. Hopefully, hopefully not. Sadly, really sadly, something like that would reduce our technological capabilities for a while. So while we would suffer tremendously from a weapon of mutual assured destruction like nuclear weapon, we would not deal with another mutually assured destruction coming from a

Okay, distraction. What is your personal view on the next five years? What do you think is going to happen? More of what we see, automation of more and more capabilities, and very likely will fully cross the human intelligence barrier. We'll have systems smarter than smartest humans. How do you prepare for that? You always ask questions, assuming there is an answer.

Some things are impossible to do. If you ask me how to build perpetual motion device, I would not say I need more. funding or more time I would say it is impossible to do. So if you ask me how do we control super intelligent machines, I don't think we can. If we build them, there is nothing you can do. If we made a smart decision against financial incentives, not to build it, to benefit from narrow tools, then how do I learn more about those tools? How do I deploy them? Those are great questions. Since you know the worst case scenario, right? And you know it's very, very possible.

You're basically going on podcasts and talking about this problem, right, to raise more awareness. But someone who doesn't have an ability to go and just talk about it, what can they do? Stop using those tools. Stop buying stocks of those companies. Like, what is a practical thing? So if you have a chance to vote for a politician who is on board with limits and we're starting to see those. So, like, I don't really see politicians talking about this. What I see is like, don't regulate AI.

Let's just let companies figure it up. So federal government is exactly like that. Right now, they removed all previous regulations. They made it through executive order illegal for all 50 states to regulate AI. But we have certain senators, certain Congress people now waking up to at least some of those problems. They may not fully comprehend long-term game, but they are going, or deep fakes are bad, or maybe the large data centers will use too much energy. It doesn't matter what they are concerned about. They're sort of directionally correct.

So they are suggesting limits. They are suggesting some regulation. It's true for other countries. I testified to UK Parliament. I testified to Kentucky legislation. There are people who are willing to listen, but it needs to be a lot of support from people where politicians can sort of come out of a closet and say,

I'm worried about super intelligence. I want to make sure we pass the right legislation. It's just, I feel like even on a personal level is so hard. I'm just imagining like, okay, you're going voting for this politician who's pausing whatever super intelligence. But then you have someone your family has cancer and you know that if this progresses, then your family member might survive a couple of years. And as humans, we tend to prioritize short-term gains over long-term threats. How do you see this possible when like if, okay, so in the U.S., I feel like 70% of people are kind of have negative attitude towards AI, according to Edelman Trust Barometer, but in countries like China, I feel like 80% of pro-AI.

How do you see this? Because it feels to me that people who are going to be voting for those politicians, there's still going to be a minority. So you said long-term versus short-term. Short-term gains versus long-term threats. I understand. And historically, you would be right. It's 20 years away, 30 years away, and this is now. Cancer is measured by five-year survival rate.

We are saying AI is coming in 2-5. So there is no time difference. Your cancer relative is going to be dealing with one of those outcomes no matter what. I feel like for people is so much easier to understand cancer because we already saw it. We haven't seen AGI yet and we don't understand it. And we still think, again, even with AI, like you've seen these graphs where only 1% of people really use it to optimize things. 99% of people have no idea. Or like 90% haven't used it.

10% used it for search. It's just so hard to imagine that in two years or like five years, it's going to be a human threat. And do you think people who are building it won't be able to control it? They have nothing. There is no patents, no papers, no algorithms which can't possibly scale. They're literally telling us, we'll figure it out, and we get there. Today we helped a... Latte for Sam.

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Okay, as a mom, off to, if you're saying that, okay, I'm talking about this, you know, I don't know any politicians who are talking about this, but anyways, when it comes to our day-to-day life. If we're all facing a future, we can't really predict. What is the best thing to do now? Enjoy life. Take that vacation. If I'm completely wrong, you're going to regret having awesome time. Okay, that actually makes me feel better. What about using AI? Do you feel like by using AI, we're helping that progress? We do, but unless all of us stop, it doesn't matter. You alone will not financially impact development. The investors, independent of what the membership fees are, I think Open AI is making like, I don't know, $13 billion, but investment in a trillion. So it's just

not a significant source of... What should people be investing in? I've heard you say invest in Bitcoin, because it has a finite supply. Would you say investing in stocks, gold? Invest in something AI cannot make more of. So if AI can just produce... more of it, that's probably going to go down. Gold is a wonderful example. Yeah, there is limited supply of it. But it's not so limited that if the price goes up, we cannot produce more of it. Some of the gold is minable, but it costs a lot more than current price per ounce.

So let's say right now we're at, I don't know, 4,500 or whatever it is. If price of gold was a million, we can get a lot more gold at that price point. Whereas Bitcoin, it doesn't matter what the price is. It's exactly the same supply. the same supply. What about real estate? It seems like we're not very good at making more waterfronts. Countries like United Arab Emirates with Dubai definitely tried. I think Qatar has some good examples of artificial islands, but it's very limited. So I think long term having a place to be and limited ability to produce more could be a good investment. It's just the way that

I see it. So for me, when I'm hearing this, super intelligence still, super intelligence still seems very far away, but what I actually can feel is automation of this white-collar labor. And it looks like, I think, in five years, yes, we're going to have more automated jobs. But again, when I'm talking to people like, I don't Mustafa Suleiman, right? He says AI is going to produce more jobs than it takes away. I just talked to LinkedIn CEO, and they saw 1.2 million new jobs because of AI, because you require a new skill set. yes, some jobs are going away. But I don't know, I just can't believe a future where is that

drastic. Let's just go with definitions. So then we say we'll create artificial general intelligence. What are we saying? We're saying we'll have a system capable of doing what a human can do. But we still haven't, like we have automated some tasks, but are we even able to create that? So it's a very different question. Are you arguing that it's impossible to ever get software to human level performance? It seems very unlikely. Some people have argued it, usually from some sort of religious perspective. We have an immortal soul.

Nothing material can automate that. But it seems in many domains we started with not knowing how to do it, got to reasonable performance, got to human level. And now in most domains, it's super intelligent. So a human will never win a game of chess against a computer again. Same happens in artificial general intelligence means. The system can do anything a human can do. So if we live in a world where that is true, let's say in two years, five years, whatever number makes you happy, what jobs will be there? Jobs where I choose to hire a human.

Yeah. But that's it. If I don't care who does it, then it gets automated. So basically the plan is then within the next few months, identify those jobs, right? And for me, it's definitely a nanny, right? I don't want a robot. Well, my husband's like, a robot is even more for size if it teaches your kids how to swim. So my husband's like closer to what you're thinking.

Can you name, let's say, five jobs that are still going to be relevant? Oldest profession. Must be the last one too. I don't know. I've heard a lot of people say how it's getting robotized. It is. And there's going to be a huge market for it, just like we see with virtual. stimuli, but I think humans will always have certain weak spot for human females.

Okay, I don't think my target audience really wants to switch to that job. Can you give me four more? Anything similar where a human is a sense, a guy, a leader, someone who is personally a trainer for you becoming a human like that. So nannies? So again, you're yoga teacher. You're, I don't know, hiking guru. whatever meditation experts in what it's like to be human

in certain domains where it's not so much about algorithmic following of steps but an experience maybe. Do you think for people who are starting their personal brands now there's still opportunity

or that it's already done? There is, but you have to do it pretty quickly. You have to become somewhat recognizable before AI is better than you and you are competing now as a nobody with something better.

And that gives you how long? Again, as soon as we switch to human level or above, so I don't know how long it's going to take in practice. I seen people say 2027, 2028, 2030, all of those numbers have been suggested by people who are not insane. So would you say if you have goals right now within your certain job that you think is going to be automated, you need to be running as fast as you can right now to reach those goals? Or just chill. Just because whatever it is in five years, we're all gone. Ideally, it's like what you did, where you combine your hobby with something financially lucrative.

That's the best. If you can get paid for doing what you like and it benefits society, that's the concept behind Ikigai, right? Japanese concept. You try to combine us, we call it iRisks, Ikega risks, where that meaning is taken from you by AI. So you want to kind of grandfather yourself in as a famous podcaster. How do you think about your career as a researcher? Is it done or you still have a couple more years? So it seems right now the writing of code is pretty much automatable. Still top humans in machine learning are designing new architectures, new systems, so a few more years than that.

But I wouldn't recommend someone spend 10 years at the university to become a professor today. I don't think they have future. What about higher education in general? should I be saving for my kids college? It's always been a better idea. Really? It's not worth it. So half the majors were dead-end majors.

They never got jobs in a major they got. And the ones which were like for specific tasks, like programming and such, you could have gotten a certificate online in six months and get the job in Silicon Valley making more than your professor. But don't you think it teaches you how to think? So for me, like I started my university when I was 17. I had no idea. Actually, I wanted to become a translator. I love languages. I'm like, I want to be translator. My parents are like, no, no, no, you're going to go study mathematics. I'm glad they told me that, because I was able to both. And for me, those five years were about meeting my husband, starting a business, because I saw an opportunity being among those students.

And so I feel like when it comes to education, it's really not about learning the skill. Because, yeah, I studied mathematics. Did I use it in my business? Not really. But it taught me how to think. It taught me how to interact with professors, which is certain skill that you need. It told me how to learn and how to be among students. Do you feel this is going to lose value in 10 years? Or it's going to be different form? I don't know how long you went to college, but I'm sure you didn't pay 100,000 a year. This is what they're charging now in some universities.

So historically, it made sense. You went to socialize, you went to kind of mature, grow up. Today, for 100,000, you have alternative ways of meeting your spouse, socializing, join a private club, join gym membership, go to a scientific conference, go to a TED talk. You'll accomplish all those things without spending five years and half a million dollars. When you say that, I feel like people, to do that, you need agency. You need to be able to tell yourself this is my plan and stick to the plan. for a 17-year-old, it's so much easier to just be put into an institution for four years that tells you what to do.

And sometimes it doesn't have to cost like $100,000. Like if you're doing PhD, it's sponsored for you, right? By... You usually don't start with PhD. You still need to pay for four years. I agree. But then you can, I don't know, you can... I studied in Germany.

I got the scholarship that paid for my studies, which was great. So I don't know. Like, I've heard from you, I've heard from Mustafa, Suleiman, colleges don't make sense. still I started the five to nine accounts for my daughters because I feel like I don't know it's it's just yes it's not a must but it's such a great opportunity to go and starting for four years and so I meet a lot of students and here's what I hear a lot lately I went to college for four years to learn this trade I paid a lot of money I wasted four years of my life not doing fun things I wanted I now graduate and there is no job waiting for me my job has been

automated. What should I do? And at this point, I want to tell them, go back in time for years and not get a degree. You wasted it. And ask today, again, let's set aside the existential problems. What will be the case in four years, five years, six years when you graduate in the market? Will this job exist? If you're not doing it for training, you're not doing it for a job, you want to become a Renaissance man, you just want liberal arts education, I think you can get it cheaper with less BS. Yeah, but this, I don't feel like a lot of people have agency. Like I don't, I'm not sure about my daughters.

If they, if I tell them like, hey, I give you this money that I saved for college and you go do whatever. I'm not sure a 17-year-old will make a good decision. Like I wanted to be a translator again, like going back to me being 17, I want to be a singer, a translator. Like, I'm so glad my parents told me you're going to study mathematics. What are you telling your kids? I don't know. So the examples you give, you're saying this 17-year-old, you cannot trust him to make a good decision. Yeah.

We're telling him, go take a loan, borrow half a million dollars, and see if you can graduate with this, that degree. Let's talk about where it's cheaper. If they wanted to start a company, we wouldn't give them a loan. So are your kids going to college or not? My oldest is 17, so he's going to decide next year. What are you telling him? He is lucky in that he's both parents, a professor, so he'll get it for free. And free makes it a much sweeter deal.

So free education is fine. So if somebody gets a scholarship to do their bachelors, you'll tell them go with it. So it's a much easier investment, right? Well, it's your time still, for years. You could have been doing something else. Right. And that's the question. What is the alternative?

If you want to start a company, if you want to do something else, I'll support you more in that direction. But if you just want to be a doctor, go ahead, fine. So when it comes to education, I feel like we touched upon this topic. agency so important and knowing what you will be doing and how you'll be doing, how does one work on agency? How do you prevent AI from making decisions for you? So it's interesting that you realize this important distinction, tools versus agents. That's the game changer. And we're about to create AI agents, which will be doing it for us. But then we ask, well, how do we make humans who are independent agents? It helps to have good examples.

So your daughters may look at you and see your mom is doing all that cool stuff. Maybe they learn by example. But it's not guaranteed. Some of it may be biological. You're just not predisposed to this type of activities. Are you teaching your kids, dad? I always taught them to be very independent and make their own decisions. My job was to make sure they're safe, safety and security.

But anything else, they make their own money. They decide how to spend it, how to invest it. everything. How early did you start with that like make money spend? Three years old? Three years old? I don't know like do you want money? So basically go and ask your kids to start a business right? Absolutely make them sell popcorn, lemonade, whatever. Whatever they can figure out yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's one of the qualities when all the jobs are taking away, right? This is something that will help us survive and find the Ikigai. I think so but again I think Ikegai meaning economic problems are all

kind of second level in comparison to existential risks. If we're not surviving, it doesn't matter. We need to figure out how to make sure humans are primary. We are not replaced. We are not automated away. And we control our destiny. Can you give me probabilities? Like in five years, one scenario, super intelligence, uncontrollable, the world is ending or whatever. In five years, Second scenario, we unionized. We protected a lot of jobs like teachers, doctors, because we still feel they are needed as humans, not as robots. And countries still can't agree how we're going to regulate this. And we're still like in a pretty normal world. Give me probabilities. So I think we'll gradually go towards that human level super intelligent point. And as we walk towards it, more and more jobs will be automated. And maybe we'll have practically. for certain human jobs. I think New York State was about to suggest legislation to make it illegal for

LLMs to talk about any licensed professions or no psychiatry, no law, no CPAs, nothing like that. I don't know if it's going to pass. It's New York State. It's going to pass. And you just use the Chinese alum. Like, I don't see this. Exactly. But here's the problem. Even if we agree not to build it right now, right now we can regulate it because it's very expensive. Those projects are like Manhattan Project. They are noticeable. You see the electricity use. You see compute use.

Problem is every year it gets cheaper and cheaper to train very powerful models. So if today you need a trillion dollars, next year it's a billion. At some point, you can do it on a laptop. And at that point, you can't stop over psychopaths in the world who will try to do it. So eventually, we're going to have this technology developed.

So eventually, scenario number one, but in five years, what's the probability of scenario number one? So I think in five years we'll definitely get to human level intelligence, but whatever the system decides to strike against us immediately or not is not obvious. Game theoretically, it has no pressure to strike right away. It can accumulate more resources, make more backups, allow us to surrender more control because we trust it.

It's immortal. It can wait 10 years, 50 years, 1,000 years, and just take over by being forced. friendly. Yeah. So that's an option. Interesting. If it's immortal and it has all the time in the world, do you feel like efforts like talking to your local politicians are even going to help? We need more time no matter what. It's a good thing to have more time for this problem. Maybe we'll find some different architectures, maybe, maybe we'll just get to enjoy more time. For everyone who's building right now, do you think software is dead? For example, if I'm building an app and if

can just wipe code the same app. Wouldn't everyone be just talking to their LLM, whatever they prefer to just build them an app or help them solve the problems? If you're already big and famous, you're kind of locked in. We saw it with social media. I mean, to write code to do something like what Twitter does is trivial, but people end up buying it for 40 billion instead of just coding it up. Because what you have is the network, you have people, all the relationship, that you cannot automate. So if I'm first mover in that space and I have an app which something no one has done before. Doesn't matter how many clones I'm going to get in the same market.

They're not going to take over. Advice for everyone who's worried about their future. You're not worried enough. If you were worried enough and fully understand the problem, we would have people in the streets protesting and more than 100 people we had last week in San Francisco. You're like my husband. We were in New York and we were talking to founder of Dolingo.

And he's like, no, no, no, people are still going to... And a lot of people in New York are like, no, no, no, it's fine. He's like, they just don't understand. And they're like, oh, you live in a bubble. It's like, no, we're not. At the last one, are we in a simulation? And if he asks, who's behind it? We're in a simulation, simulators.

Who are they? We don't know from inside. You have to escape from the simulation to find out. That's the ultimate scientific question. What is outside the simulation? Wow, I feel like that's a topic for another podcast. Thank you so much, Roman. If you enjoyed this episode, there's actually another person I really want you to listen to.

I did an episode with Mustafa Suleiman, who is also a philosopher. So he's kind of similar to Roman. We talked a lot about the future. He's much more positive, but he has the same take on education. Don't save for kids' college. So thank you so much for tuning into this episode. And now tune in and listen to.

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